


Passing

by deepcreek



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: F/F, One Night Stands, cartography ;)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-10
Updated: 2017-12-10
Packaged: 2019-02-06 15:50:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12820857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deepcreek/pseuds/deepcreek
Summary: "It’s my last night on this station. I’m surrounding myself with good things. Do you want to be one of them?"





	Passing

The first thing Pel notices is that there is an extra chair at the table. The woman with feathers in her hair is also sitting slightly lower than she should be. It’s time to tell off whichever waiter had this section before she did—preferably within earshot of Quark.

As she approaches the table, rehearsing her apology from the management at the incompetence of anyone but said management, she realizes she’s looking at the cartographer who brings her chair with her. Right after she starts talking. Of course.

“Ma’am, I am so sorr--” Pel’s voice cracks as the woman turns around, because, oh shit, she’s gorgeous. _Quick, she can’t notice that my voice went high, better turn the Ferengi Male act to maximum._ –“sorry to see a pretty girl like you sitting all by herself?”

The blonde laughs, probably at the way Pel’s voice curves up uncertainly at the end of her sentence. “You could always keep me company.”

Pel is working a shift, actually, but fuck it, all the other waiters are always flirting with customers on the clock. Doing so herself might actually lower suspicion. (“You’re just making excuses to chat up a beautiful woman,” says a small voice in Pel’s head which she resolutely ignores.)

“What’s your name?” Pel asks as she slides into the seat across from Melora’s. She knows all about the other woman already—station gossip loves what’s new—but it’s important to be polite. Or as Rule 39 would put it, “Don’t tell customers more than they need to know.”

“I’m Ensign Melora Pazlar. And you?”

“I’m Pel.” She has the gruff bark of this statement down, and relaxes back in her chair, happy to be back in familiar territory. She regards the woman across from her with the faintly proprietary interest that she’s practiced so many times in the mirror.

“You’re the cartographer, eh? You’re friendlier than I’d heard.”

This gets her another laugh. “Let’s just say I’m keeping a promise I made to a friend.”

“Doctor Bashir.”

“You’ve got it.”

She’s called him a friend, which either means they’ve ended their relationship or it’s open. Either way, she’s signaling the possibility of something more intimate than the flirting and potential increase in drink orders that Pel had used to justify the start of this conversation. Shit?

Pel’s mind is racing, but luckily her mouth is covering for her: something vaguely insinuating, something about a celebratory drink. Get to know you better, et cetera, et cetera. How dull of her.

Melora interrupts her. “That’s all very nice, but what are you covering for?”

“Wh-what? I’m not—“

“Pel. I know what a verbal defense screen sounds like. I don’t think the others would notice it, but you’re a little too—“ she shrugs—“too normal entrance-level Ferengi. For it to be the truth, I mean.”

Pel is blushing, she can feel it—which means her ears are turning red but her extensions are not. She claps her hands to the side of her head and groans, nearly bashing her head on the table. Her Moogie’s voice in her head informs her that this is not attractive behavior.

Melora makes a noise somewhere between laughing and choking. “I’m sorry, I know you’ve just met me and you have no reason to trust me. I should have been more indirect.”

“Yeah, you’re a very direct person, that’s one word for it,” Pel grumbles, not making eye contact.

“Let me make up for it, buy you a drink.” Melora’s drawl is a pretty good approximation of the kind of slick young Ferengi Pel had been trying with her, and she’s surprised into a hearty laugh. Which means she throws back her head a bit, exposing her ears. Why can’t she learn to be a little more controlled?

 “Wait. Are you literally covering for something?” Melora gestures to the side of Pel’s head.

Pel sighs. This woman is making her do that a lot, and not in the way she’d hoped.

“Yeah, okay, do you know about the Ferengi gender system?”

“Hm, you’ve got two, right?”

“Yeah. Males pursue profit, and females pursue womb contracts and raise little business mavens. And how do we decide who gets to do what?”

Melora leans in, lowering her voice. “Well, genital shape, I’d imagine. Right?”

 “No, we’ve all got the same sort of goods in that compartment. We go by lobe size.” She taps the side of her own extension lightly, careful not to jar it.

Melora nods, reflecting. “That’s why I’ve heard males taunting those with smaller lobes, they were almost a female?”

“Yeah. Or a little latinum slipped to the nurse, and suddenly a borderline case became a male.”

“You weren’t a borderline case, were you.”

“Not at all! My Moogie used to call me Little Tulip Ears.”

“So how—did you use growth hormones?”

“A silicone cartridge, a printer and a data chip was all I needed,” Pel declares. “And a little latinum for my new papers, of course.”

Melora sighs. “I wish limb prosthetics patterns floated around the datasphere like that. Last time I looked, the newest one I could find was over a hundred years old. The plastics it was made from don’t exist anymore.”

“Thus the trolley.”

“Yes, this old thing is from a manual in the Elaysian antiquities library. Luckily my ancestors were very precise about wheel calibration and engine construction. You know, they even included—“

Pel isn’t following Melora’s dive into the technical, but she is enjoying the way the other woman waves her arms around, and how her eyes light up as she talks about metallic alloys and scalable design. They’re such a lovely blue, and she hasn’t even reacted to her companion’s gender—is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Noticing Pel’s glassy stare, Melora cuts herself off. “Oh, I’m so sorry, I must be boring you. I know historical engineering isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.”

“No, no, not at all!” Pel insists, searching for an excuse. Her eyes land on the clock. “It’s just that it’s the end of my shift, and if Quark sees me having too much fun he’ll charge me for taking up a customer’s seat.” This is actually the first time she hasn’t noticed the shift change—Melora really has distracted her.

“I see. You want to take this someplace more private.”

“I think you do too, Melora.”

She grins. “My quarters,” she says a little loudly, earning Pel a thumbs-up from one of her coworkers.

***

Pel’s short legs are no match for Melora’s trolley, and she hates racing after someone like a subservient female.

“Do you have a half setting on that thing?” she pants.

The other woman laughs and brings the trolley to a halt. “My quarters are the first room after the second left and then the third right. You go ahead, I’ll catch up to you.”

She returns carrying a bottle of Romulan ale of rather good vintage, as well as an assortment of fresh Klingon delicacies (the _racht_ is still squirming!).

“Dax and the Chef owed me some favors, and I figured I might as well cash them in. It’s nice to have someone to split this all with.”

“Good choice,” Pel says.

Melora actually blushes. Score.

***

 “This is nice,” Pel says as Melora trails off on a gossipy story about her brother’s first girlfriend. The ale is sharp but not too boozy, the snacks are fishy and wriggly enough to satisfy the pickiest Ferengi, and the company isn’t bad either.

“Thanks, I think so too.” The other woman brushes her hair behind an ear and helps herself to more hors d’oeuvres.

Pel clears her throat. “So you invited me back here to, to make sure we could enjoy fine food and beverages without Quark taking a cut?”

Melora’s expression is indecipherable, and she is silent for a moment.

“If that’s what you want, the ale really is good, and I’m enjoying your company.”

Pel huffs out a breath from between her back teeth.

“I guess when you invited me back I got the wrong impression.”

Melora looks up, a little irritated judging by the crease in her brow.

“Pel, it’s my last night on this station. I’m surrounding myself with good things. Do you want to be one of them?”

“Yeah,” Pel breathes, so low she’s not sure Melora can hear her, “damn, I do.”

Melora kisses her.

They’re about the same height when Melora’s sitting, and Pel leans into the space between her knees to get better access to her neck, rubbing up inadvertently against the Elaysian’s crotch—and then, when she notices the noise the other woman makes at that, not so inadvertently. Melorra’s hands are up under her jacket, making a map of her back.

Pel is being very deliberate with her teeth, but when Melora brushes against her lobes she grimaces and can’t help a small noise of frustration. She leans a little hard into Melora’s arm, and the other woman yelps and pulls back.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m turning down the gravity, if that’s okay with you. Can you not make a big thing out of it?”

Pel takes off her extensions and sets them on the table.

“As long as you don’t call me Little Tulip Ears.”

Melora’s expression is that of someone who has been given a lot of latinum unexpectedly. She reaches out, somewhat hesitant, to trace one finger along the shell of Pel’s ear, and Pel arches her head, welcoming the gesture. She sighs with relief—it’s been a long time since anyone has touched her lobes, and never with this much respect.

“This isn’t where I expected the night to go when you sat down at my table,” Melora says softly, cupping the back of Pel’s ear. When she wheels away to fiddle with a box on the wall, Pel squeaks at the loss of contact.

Then she’s floating.

It’s an incredible feeling, but it also feels as though her insides are only staying in the boundaries of her outsides through sheer force of will. Pel focuses for a moment on containing her psychological nausea.

Meanwhile Melora is rising out of her chair like an ocean predator in a playful mood, grinning from ear to ear. She is disengaging her metal splints almost carelessly, tossing them into a rack by the door. Pel feels breathless, either because of the intimacy of the moment or because her lungs have changed shape or both.

Melora moves in equal but opposite reactions until she is floating above Pel, her face below her feet and almost touching the other woman’s forehead.

“Welcome to my home.”

Pel smiles, letting herself show all her teeth this time, unfeminine and straightforward. She pushes off against the floor, launching herself at Melora with more force than she’d intended, and has to grab onto the other woman’s shirt so she doesn’t careen into the ceiling. They spin for a moment, and then Melora does something with her feet that stabilizes them and they’re drifting parallel to the floor, Melora and all her hair spread out above Pel.

Pel is certainly drifting a bit with the dissipating kinetic energy, but Melora is still, only her hair rippling softly. She reaches out wonderingly to touch it.

“How do you do that?”

Melora grins.

“You’re good at noticing things,” she says softly, and the strand of hair Pel is touching curls around her fingers. Then there are other strands wrapping around her lobes, ticklishly light, and Pel feels like maybe the world she’s in has stopped being real. She giggles and reaches for Melora’s hand.

She is drawn in, chest to chest with the woman above her, and for a while Pel is floating under the curiosity of Melora’s hands and hair. The blonde even tugs on one of Pel’s ears gently, making her gasp. She’d never thought to try that motion on her own.

Then Pel remembers that she should probably be reciprocating. She opens her eyes and stretches lazily, bringing her arms to rest on Melora’s shoulders. This brings her to eye level with Melora’s collarbone, so she goes for it, licking along the shell of the bone. The other woman throws her head back—which, irritatingly, limits the hair-to-lobe action—but the sigh she emits is worth the trouble.

Pel searches Melora’s back for her shirt fastener, but her hands don’t find anything. She lifts her head from the curve where Melora’s neck meets her chin.

“A little help?”

“Oh, of course!” Melora guides her hands to the zipper at the front of her uniform shirt—not standard Starfleet design, Pel automatically analyzes, but perhaps more comfortable when one’s back is against a hard surface all day.

Then Pel is distracted by her partner’s breasts and belly and the beautiful curves of her sides. The Ferengi male aesthetic is square; she hasn’t had a relationship with someone else’s roundness for some time. She grazes her hands and her face over the woman floating above her, lost in awe.

“Turnabout is fair play, you know.”

Pel jumps a little at the sound of Melora’s voice, and she lets out a “huh?” that isn’t very elegant.

“You’re still in your suit jacket, dear.”

Pel winces. “Please don’t call me ‘dear’.”

“Oh, crap, I’m sorry. But can I help you out of that?”

Pel nods, and Melora pulls them down to the floor, suddenly chatty-- “It’s no good to get hit in the face by a floating jacket at the wrong time, trust me.” Her hands on Pel’s buttons are very gentle.

As Melora takes her shirt off, Pel is grateful she doesn’t say anything about the size of her chest. Instead, she says “Oh, wonderful,” as she traces the lines of Pel’s bones.

“Thanks, I think so too,” Pel says a little breathlessly, and kisses her.

 Which is when she realizes Melora has lifted her off the floor. Her legs flail for a moment before she wraps them around Melora’s waist.

“Ow,” says Melora, pulling back and setting Pel feet on the ground. “Are you still wearing shoes?”

“Oh. Yeah, I am.”

“ _Heels?”_

“It’s traditional!”

“Okay, that’s it. We’re getting naked immediately.”

**Author's Note:**

> The theme album for this fic is "She's So Unusual" by Cyndi Lauper.


End file.
